Robert Edward Lee. An address delivered at the dedication of the monument to General Robert Edward Lee at Richmond, Virginia, May 29, 1890

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CHARLES MINOT

Class of 1828

Robert Edward Lee.

AN ADDRESS

DEJJVaKXIl AT THS

Dedication of the Monument

General Robert Edwar:

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA,

M\v W

A R C h F-: R A N 1 1 1- :

i:r,ll BY THE LEE MONUMENT AS90C1

■

Robert Edward Lee.

*
t

AN ADDRESS

DELIVERED AT THE

Dedication of the Monument

\

TO

General Robert Edward Lee

%t

AT

V/^ •RICHMOND, VIRGINIA,

MAY 29, 1890,

BY

Archer Anderson.

PUBLISHED BY THE IiEE MONUMENT ASSOCIATION.

RICHMOND:

WM. ELLIS JONES, PRINTER.
189O.

USv,:.^.^ - j

A

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Fellow Citizens,- —

A people carves its own image in the
monuments of its great men. Not Virginians only,
not only those who dwell in the fair land stretch-
ing from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, but all who
be&r the American name may proudly consent that
posterity shall judge them by the structure, which we
are here to dedicate and crown with a heroic figure.
For, as the Latin poet said that, wherever the Roman
name and sway extended, there should be the sepul-
chre of Pompey, so to-day, in every part of America,
the character and fame of Robert Edward Lee are
treasured as a "possession for all time."

And, if this be true of that great name, what shall
be Said of the circumstances which surround us on
this day of solemn commemoration ?

That at the end of the first quarter of a century
after the close of a stupendous civil war, in which
more than a million men struggled for the mastery
during four years of fierce and bloody conflict, we
should see the Southern States in complete possession
of their local self-government, the Federal Constitu-
tion unchanged save as respects the great issues sub-

ROBERT EDWARD LEE.

mitted to the arbitrament of war, and the defeated
party — whilst in full and patriotic sympathy with all
the present grandeur and imperial promise of a
reunited country — still not held to renounce any
glorious memory, but free to heap honors upon their
trusted leaders, living or dead — all this reveals a
character in which the American people may well be
content to be handed down to history.

All this, and more, will be the testimony of the
solid fabric we here complete. It will recall the gen-
erous initiative and the unflagging zeal of those noble
women of the South to whom in large measure we
owe this auspicious day ; it will bear its lasting wit-
ness as the voluntary offering of the people, not the
governments of the Southern States ; and, standing
as a perpetual memorial of our great leader, it will
stand not less as an enduring record of what his
fellow-citizens deemed most worthy to be honored.

What kind of greatness, then — it may be fitting on
this spot to ask — what kind of greatness should men
most honor in their fellow-men ? Vast and varied is
the circle of human excellence — where is our para-
mount allegiance due ?

In that "temple of silence and reconciliation, " that
Westminster Abbey of Florence, whither so many
paths of glory led, you may read one answer to this
question on the cenotaph of Dante in the inscription :
" Honor the sublime poet/* These words the medi-

ROBERT ED WARD LEE.

aeval poet himself applied to his great master, Virgil.
After near six centuries they still touch some of the
deepest feelings of the heart. And with them come
crowding on the mind memories of a long line of
poets, artists, historians, orators, thinkers who have
sounded all the depths of speculation, princes of
science who have advanced the frontiers of ordered
knowledge, of the least of whom it may be said — as
Newton's gravestone records of the greatest — that
he was an honor to the race of men. Yes, if our life
were only thought and emotion, if will and action and
courage did not make up its greatest part, men might
justly reverence the genius of poets and thinkers
above all other greatness. But strong and natural
as is the inclination of those given up to the intellectual
life thus to exalt the triumphs of the imagination and
the reason, such is not the impulse of the great heart
of the multitude. And the multitude is right. In a
large and true sense conduct is more than intellect,
more than art or eloquence — to have done great
things is nobler than to have thought or expressed
them.

Thus, in every land, the most conspicuous monu-
ments commemorate the great actors, not the great
thinkers of the world's history ; and among these
men of action, the great soldier has always secured
the first place in the affections of his countrymen.
What means this universal outburst of the love and

6 ROBERT EDWARD LEE.

admiration of our race for men who have been fore-
most in war? Is the common sense of mankind
blinded by the blaze of military glory? Or does
some deep instinct teach us that the character of the
ideal commander is the grandest manifestation in
which man can show himself to man ? The power
and the fascination of this .ideal are attested by the
indulgent admiration we bestow on men who, on the
one side, grandly fill it out, while, on the other, falling
grievously below it, weighed down by something base
and earthly. Thus, standing before that marvellous
monument in Berlin from which Frederick "in his
habit as he lived " looks down in homely greeting to
his Prussian people, and seems still to warn them that
the art which won empire can alone maintain it, we
forget the selfish ambition, the petty foibles, the chill-
ing life — we remember only the valor, the consummate
skill, the superhuman constancy of the hero-king.
Or if, turning from a career so crowned with final
triumph, we recall how, for lack of a like commander,
France in our own day has been trampled under foot,
we may conceive the devotion with which Frenchmen
still crowd about the tomb of Napoleon — a name that,
in spite of all its lurid associations, in spite of all the
humiliations of the Second Empire, has still had
power to lift the French nation, during these latter
years, from abasement and despair.

Surely there must be something superhuman in the

ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 7

genius of a great commander, if it can make us for-
getful of the woes and crimes so often attending it.
How freely, then, may we lavish our admiration and
gratitude, when no allowance has to be made for
human weakness, when we find military greatness
allied with the noblest public and private virtue !
Here, at last, in this ideal union is that rare greatness
which men may most honor in their fellow-men.

It is the singular felicity of this Commonwealth of
Virginia to have produced two such stainless captains.
The fame of the one, consecrated by a century of
universal reverence and the growth of a colossal
empire, the result of his heroic labors, has been com-
memorated in this city by a monument, in whose
majestic presence no man ever received the sugges-
tion of a thought that did not exalt humanity. The
fame of the other, not yet a generation old and won
in a cause that was lost, is already established by that
impartial judgment of foreign nations, which antici-
pates the verdict of the next age, upon an equal
pinnacle, and millions of our countrymen, present
here with us in their thoughts and echoing back from
city and plain and mountain top the deep and rever-
ent voice of this vast multitude, will this day confirm
our solemn declaration that the monument to George
Washington has found its only fitting complement and
companion in a monument to Robert Lee.

I ventured to say that, if we take account of human

ROBERT ED WARD LEE.

nature in all its complexity, the character of the ideal
commander is the grandest manifestation in which
man can show himself to man. Consider some of the
necessary elements of this great character. And let
us begin with its humbler virtues, its more lowly
labors. If we take the commander merely on his
•administrative side, what treasures of energy, forecast,
and watchfulness do we not see him expending in the
prosaic work of providing the means of subsistence
for his army! He is always confronted on a vast
scale with man's elemental and primitive want — his
daily bread. The matter is so vital that he can never
commit it entirely to the staff. The control of the
whole subject must be ever in his own grasp.

Then, he must have not only an intimate knowl-
edge of the geography and resources of the theatre
of war as maps and books give them, but an instinct
for topography and an unerring faculty for finding
the way by night or day through forest and field,
usually to be met with only in men who pass their
whole lives in the open air. To this add a complete
acquaintance with all parts of army work and organi-
zation — a very genius for detail, an artillerist's eye
for distance, and an engineer's judgment and invent-
iveness, with a wide and critical comprehension of
all the great campaigns of history. But he must
possess a still higher knowledge. He must know
human nature, he must be wise in his judgment and

ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 9

selection of his own agents, and especially must he,
be skilled to read his adversary's mind and character.
Upon this varied and profound knowledge will depend
the success of those large plans embracing the whole
theatre of war which soldiers call strategy.

Now, combine all these elements, conceive of them
as expanded into genius, and you may form some idea
of the merely intellectual equipment of a great com-
mander. But he might have all this and be fit only
to be a chief of staff.

The business of war is with men ; the business of
a general is to lead men in that most wonderful of
human organizations, an army — on that dread arena,
the field of battle. And now come into play the
qualities of heart and soul. Consecrated to his high
office, a general ought to be morally the best, the
most just, the most generous, the most patriotic man
among his countrymen. He must not only be their
greatest leader — he must know how to make every
man in his army believe him to be their greatest
leader. And mere belief is not enough. There must
be in him a power to call forth an enthusiastic and
passionate devotion. Of all careers a military life
makes the heaviest demand on the self-effacement and
self-sacrifice of those who are to follow and obey.
Love and enthusiasm for a leader are the only forces
powerful enough to raise men to this heroic pitch.
Without them an army is a mob, or at most a spirit-

10 ROBERT ED WARD LEE.

less machine. With them it becomes capable of the
sublimest exhibitions of valor and devotion.

But, essential as is this magnetic power in the
leader to draw all hearts, to quiet jealousies, to com-
pel obedience, and to fuse the thoughts and passions
of thousands of individual men into a single mass of
martial ardor, all these gifts may be present and the
true commander absent. Politicians have had these
gifts, soldiers even have had these gifts, and utterly
failed in the command of armies. To all these rich
endowments there must be added an imperturbable
moral courage equal to any burden or buffet of for-
tune, and physical intrepidity in its highest and
grandest forms — not only the valor which carries a
division commander under orders with overmastering
rush to sojne desperate assault, like Cleburne's at
Franklin, or makes him stand immovable as a stone
wall, as Bee saw Jackson at Manassas, but an aggres-
sive and unresting ardor to fall on the enemy, like
that which burned in Nelson, when he wrote : '• I will
fight them the moment I can reach their fleet, be they
at anchor or under sail — I will not lose one moment
in fighting the French fleet — I mean to follow them if
they go to the Black Sea — not a moment shall be lost
in pursuing the enemy. * * * I will not lose a
moment in bringing them to action."

With this fierce passion for fight, the general must
unite the self-control, which will refuse battle or calmly

ROBERT ED WARD LEE. 11

await attack, and, not least, the fortitude which can
endure defeat. For weeks and months he must be
ready at any moment of the day or night to draw on
these vast resources without ever showing weakness
under the protracted strain. And over and above all
there must preside some NGod-like power, which, in
the crisis of strategy or the storm of battle, not only
preserves to the commander all these high faculties,
but actually intensifies and expands them. In those
irrevocable moments, when the decision of an instant
may determine the destiny of States, mere talents
must spring into genius, and mind and outward eye
send flashes of intuition through the smoke of battle
and the dark curtain on which the enemy's move-
ments are to be read only in fitful shadows. In that
hour of doom, a nation's fate, a people's ransom may
be staked on one man's greatness of soul.

It is the recognition in Lee of the principal elements
of this high ideal — courage, will, energy, insight,
authority — the organizing mind with its eagle glance,
and the temperament for command broad-based upon
fortitude, hopefulness, joy in battle — all exalted by
heroic purpose and kindled with the glow of an
unconquerable soul; it is, besides and above all, the
unique combination in him of moral strength with
moral beauty, of all that is great in heroic action with
all that is good in common life, that will make of this

12 ROBER T ED WARD LEE.

pile of stone a sacred shrine, dear throughout coming
ages, not to soldiers only, but to all

11 Helpers and friends of mankind."

Let a brief recital show that these are words of
truth and soberness.

Lee was fortunate in his birth, for he sprang from
a race of men who had just shown, in a world-famous
struggle, all of the virtues and few of the faults of
a class selected to rule because fittest to rule. His
father had won a brilliant fame as a cavalry leader,
and the signal honor of the warm friendship of
Washington. The death of " Light- Horse" Harry
Lee when Robert Lee was only eleven years old
made the boy the protector of his mother — a school
of virtue not unfitted to develop a character that
nature had formed for honor. It was partly, no
doubt, the example of his father's brilliant service,
but mainly the soldiers blood which flowed in his
veins, that impelled him to seek a place in the Military
Academy at West Point. He was presented to Presi-
dent Jackson, and we may well believe the story, that
the old soldier was quickly won by the gallant youth,
and willingly secured him to the army. I cannot
dwell on his proficiency in the military school, or his
early years of useful service in the corps of engi-
neers, though, doubtless, those practical labors had an

R OBER T ED WA RD LEE. 13

important influence upon the future leader of that
Army of Northern Virginia, so famous for its

11 — looming bastions fringed with fire" —

the creation of the axe and spade.

One auspicious incident of that time I must not
pass by — his marriage to the great-granddaughter of
Washington's wife. Thus another tie was formed
which connected him by daily associations of family
and place with Washington's fame and character.
He became, in some sort, Washington's direct per-
sonal representative. Is it fanciful to suppose that
all this had an immediate effect on his nature, so
moulded already to match with whatever was great
and noble ? It may well be believed that Lee made
Washington his model of public duty, and, in every
important conjuncture of his life, unconsciously, no
doubt, but effectively asked himself the question:
41 How would Washington have acted in this case?"

The greater elements of Lee's character must
appear in the story of his later life. Let me try now
to give some conception of his noble person, his
grace, his social charm, his pure life — of that inborn
dignity which with a look could check familiarity or
convey rebuke, of that manly beauty and command-
ing presence, fitted alike to win child or maiden and
to awaken in the sternest soldier an expectation and
assurance of pre-eminence and distinction. It was

14 ROBER T ED WARD LEE.

this which drew from a great master of the art of
war, whom a beneficent Providence still spares to be
a model of every manly and martial virtue to the sons
of the youngest soldiers who followed his unstained
banner, it was the recollection of the fascination of
Lee's manner and person in the days of their early
service that drew from General Joseph E. Johnston
these words of vivid and loving description: "No
other youth or man so united the qualities that win
warm friendship and command high respect. For he
was full of sympathy and kindness, genial and fond
of gay conversation and even of fun * * * while
his correctness of demeanor and language and atten-
tion to all duties, personal and official, and a dignity
as much a part of himself as the elegance of his per-
son, gave him a superiority that every one acknowl-
edged in his heart."

It was this which made Lord Wolseley say of him
as he saw him in later years : " I have met many of
the great men of my time, but Lee alone impressed
me with the feeling that I was in the presence of a
man who was cast in a grander mould, and made of
different and finer metal than all other men. He is
stamped upon my memory as a being apart and supe-
rior to all others in every way/'

Thus endowed to command the love and respect
of every human being that came into his presence,
fully equipped in every military art, temperate, pure,

ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 1 5

healthful, brave, consciously following duty as his pole
star, and all unconsciously burning with ardor to win
a soldier's fame, he entered upon that war with Mex-
ico, which was destined to prove a training-ground
for the chief leaders in the conflict between the States.
There he soon gave proof of great qualities for war.
But I may stay only to mention one incident in which
he displayed such rare force of will, such aggrestsive
and untiring enterprise as at once marked him out for
high command. It was just before the battle of Con-
treras. Scott had learned through Lee's reconnois-
sance that the Mexican position could be attacked in
rear by a difficult movement across a pathless and
rugged volcanic field called the " Pedregal." A pain-
ful march had brought the turning division at night-
fall to the decisive point, and Lee was called into
council by the division commander. The council
sat long. At last, about nine at night, it resolved on
Lee's advice upon an attack at dawn. But it was
essential that communication should be established
with Scott's headquarters. Lee declared his purpose
to effect this communication, and through the stormy
night, alone and on foot, with enemies on either hand,
he pushed his way across that volcanic waste, com-
parable only in the difficulties it presented to some
Alpine glacier rent with yawning chasms. He won
his way to Scott by midnight. At daybreak as engi-
neer he guided the front attack led by Twiggs. The

16 ROBER T ED WARD LEE.

turning column heard their comrades' guns. They
fell on the Mexican rear. A brief and bloody resist-
ance served only to heighten the triumph of Ameri-
can skill and valor. The position was won and
Contreras, to the eye of history, prefigures Chancel-
lorsville.

General Scott described this .exploit of Lee's as
" the greatest feat of physical and moral courage per-
formed by any individual, in his knowledge, pending
the campaign." History will record, as Scott himself
nobly admitted, that Lee was Scott's right arm in
Mexico.

I may not dwell on the round of engineering duties
which Lee discharged with exactness and fidelity
during the years following the Mexican war. Of
more interest is his first actual command of troops, on
his appointment as lieutenant-colonel of the famous
Second cavalry serving in Texas. This frontier ser-
vice of three or four years was important in develop-
ing his military character, though it may seem an
inadequate preparation in the details of command
when compared, for instance, with Wellington's long
apprenticeship in India. But genius has many schools,
and an earnest, observant mind quickly grasps the
lessons of practice.

A dark cloud of war was now threatening to burst
over a hitherto peaceful country. The routine of
frontier administration and Indian police must have

R OBER T ED WARD LEE. 17

seemed but idle child's play amid the fierce passions
of that rising tempest of civil strife. No man who
could think could think of anything but the impend-
ing danger. And Lee, the son of a leader of the
Revolution, closely linked by descent and association
with the men who won American independence and
made the American Constitution, Lee, inheriting along
with the most ardent love of the Union, a paramount
loyalty to his native State, now saw himself obliged to
make his choice and take his side in an irrepressible
conflict. No more painful struggle ever tore the
heart of a patriot. He had served the whole country
in a gallant army, which commanded all his affection.
He, better than most men, knew the great resources
of the North and West. He had sojourned and
labored in every part of the land, and could appre-
ciate the arguments drawn from its physical charac-
teristics, from its great river systems and mountain
ranges for an indissoluble union. He knew Northern
men in their homes; he knew the bravery of the
Northern soldiers who filled our regular regiments in
Mexico. He was above the prejudices and taunts of
the day, which belittled Northern virtue and cour-
age. He knew that, with slight external differences,
there was a substantial identity of the American race
in all the States, North and South. He was equally
above the weak and passionate view of slavery as
good in itself, into which the fanatical and unconsti-

18 ROBERT ED WARD LEE.

tutional agitation of the Abolition party had driven
many strong minds in the South. He regarded slavery
as an evil which the South had inherited and must
be left to mitigate and, if possible, extirpate by wise
and gradual measures. He, if any man of that time,
was capable of weighing with calmness the duty of
the hour. With him, the only question then, as at
every moment of his spotless life, was to find out
which way duty pointed.

Against the urgent solicitations of General Scott,
in defiance of the temptations of ambition — for the
evidence is complete that the command of the United
States army was offered to him — in manifest sacrifice
of all his pecuniary interests, he determined that duty
bade him side with his beloved Virginia. He laid
down his commission, and solemnly declared his pur-
pose never to draw his sword save in behau of his
native State.

And what was that native State to whose defence
he henceforth devoted his matchless sword ?

It was a Commonwealth older than the Union of
the States ; it was the first abode of English freedom
in the Western World ; it was the scene of the earliest
organized legislative resistance to the encroachments
of the mother country ; it was the birthplace of the
immortal leader of our Revolutionary armies, and of
many of the architects of the Federal Constitution ;
it was the central seat of that doctrine of State sove-

ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 19

reignty sanctioned by the great names of Jefferson
and Madison ; it was a land rich in every gift of the
earth and sky — richer still in its race of men, brave,
frugal, pious, loving honor, but fearing God; it was a
land hallowed then by memories of an almost un-
broken series of patriotic triumphs, but now, after the
wreck and ruin of four years of unsuccessful war,
consecrated anew by deeds of heroism and devotion,
whose increasing lustre will borrow a brighter radi-
ance from their sombre background of suffering and
defeat. And this day and on this spot, with height-
ened pride and undiminished love, the sons of that
Old Dominion may still salute her in the patriot
Roman's verse —

" Salve magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus,
Magna virum"

This was the land that Lee defended,

Accepting the commission of major-general of the
forces of Virginia, he soon passed by the necessary
and rapid sway of events into the service of the Con-
federate States. Virginia had become the battle-
ground on which the Confederacy was to win or lose
its independence, and Lee could only defend Vir-
ginia as a general of the Confederate army.

During the early months of the war he labored
unceasingly and with success in the organization of
those armies, which stemmed and dashed back the

r

20 ROBERT EDWARD LEE.

first flood of invasion. Here his patience, his careful
and minute attention to details, his knowledge of
men, and particularly of those officers of the old
army who espoused the Southern cause, his thorough
military preparation, and, more than all else, his con-
viction that the war would be long and desperate,
made him an invaluable counsellor of the Confede-
rate Executive. His co-operation with the more for-
tunate generals, chosen to lead armies in the field,
was zealous and cordial, and he did not murmur when
at last, in August, 1861, his turn for active service
came in what promised to be a thankless and in-
auspicious duty.

The Confederate arms had been unfortunate in
Northwestern Virginia. Garnett had been over-
whelmed and defeated. Loring, with large reinforce-
ments, had not pressed forward to snatch the lost
ground from an enemy weakened by great detach-
ments. So Lee was sent to Valley Mountain to com-
bine all the elements of our strength, and by a stroke
of daring recover West Virginia. The Confederate
President was convinced that he was the leader for
such a campaign — the opinion of the army and of
the people enthusiastically confirmed his choice.

Lee quickly mastered the problem before him by
personal reconnoissances, and laid his plans with skill
and vigor. But the attack on Cheat Mountain, which
a year later would have been a brilliant success,

ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 21

ended in failure and mortification. Lee was able to
show to the public but one of the high qualities of a
great general — magnanimity under disappointment
and defeat. His old comrades of the Mexican war
knew him ; the Confederate President knew him and
still believed in him ; but the verdict of the general
public on Robert Lee in the winter of 1861-62 might
have been summed up in the historian's judgment of
Galba, who " by common consent would have been
deemed fit to command, had he never commanded."

In such a school of patience and self-control was
our great leader destined to pass the first fourteen
months of the war.

The first day of "Seven Pines 1 ' had been fought,
the fierce temper and stern valor of the Army of
Northern Virginia had been established, a brilliant
success had been won on our right by Longstreet
and D. H. Hill, and General Johnston, about night-
fall, was arranging a vigorous and combined attack
for the morrow. At that moment, Johnston, whose
body was already covered with honorable scars, was
stricken down by two severe wounds, and the army
was deprived of its leader.

On the afternQon of the next day, about five miles
below Richmond, Lee assumed command of that
army called of Northern Virginia, but fitly represent-
ing the valor and the virtue of every Southern State,
that army which henceforth was to be the insepara-
ble partner of his fame, that army whose heroic toils,

4

22 ROBER T ED WARD LEE,

marches, battles would still, if every friendly record
perished, be emblazoned for the admiration of future
ages in its adversary's recital of the blood and trea-
sure expended to destroy it. So we are able now to
measure Hannibal's greatness only by the magnitude
of Rome's sacrifices and devotion.

At any period of the war the loss of Richmond
would probably have been fatal to the Confederacy.
This truth is the key to the campaigns of the Army of
Northern Virginia. It will explain and justify in
Lee's conduct many apparent violations of sound
principles of war. Ordinarily, nothing is more fatal
than to make the fortunes of an army turn on the
defence of a position. This was Pemberton's error
at Vicksburg — it was Osman's at Plevna. But the
political importance of Richmond as the capital of a
great State and of the Confederacy, its real strategic
advantages as the nucleus of a railway system and
other communications, embracing Virginia and the
States to the South and West, and still more, the
startling fact that its manufacturing establishments,
though poor and inadequate, were at first absolutely,
and always practically, the sole resource of the South
for artillery and railway material — these considera-
tions, in their combined strength, brought about, in
the minds of those directing the Confederate govern-
ment, a conviction of the indispensable necessity of
Richmond to the life of the Southern cause.

Washington talked of retreating, in the last resort,

ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 23

to the mountains of West Augusta, and there main-
taining an undying resistance to the British invaders.
It is possible that such a guerilla warfare might have
succeeded a hundred years ago against an enemy
coming across the Atlantic, before the use of steam on
sea and river and railway, and before even turnpikes
connected the coast with the mountains. It is. possi-
ble. But the probability is that, as in other contests,
the end of organized regular warfare would have
been the virtual end of the struggle. How much
more must this have been the case in our recent war,
when military armaments had already become com-
plex and artificial ! Modern armies, with their elabo-
rate small arms, artillery, and ammunition, cannot be
maintained without great mechanical appliances.
They cannot even be fed without great lines of rail-
way. And how can railways be utilized in a country
closely blockaded without these same manufacturing
resources ?

All this was true from 1861 to 1865. At no time
during that period did there exist, south of Richmond,
foundries and rolling-mills, capable, in a year's work,
of supplying the Confederate armies and railways for
three months. In the first part of the war, the nucleus
of such establishments could not be found elsewhere
in the South. In the latter part, beginnings had been
made, but the new production of cannon and railway
material never became adequate to the demands of a

24 ROBER T ED WARD LEE.

campaign. If the requisite machinery could have been
improvised, the product could not have been hastily
increased, because of the absolute lack of skilled
workmen. The loss of the skilled artisans of Rich-
mond would have been as fatal, in our poverty, as the
loss of its mills and workshops.

The defence of Richmond, then, was the superhu-
man task to which Lee now found himself committed
by the policy of the Confederate Government, and
by the pressure of conditions, independent of his will
or control.

How precious for us Virginians . is this intimate
association of his immortal labors with this city of our
affections — for more than a century the centre of our
State life, for four years of heroic struggle the invio-
late citadel of a people in arms ! The familiar ob-
jects about us are memorials of him ; the streets
which his feet have trodden, the church where he wor-
shipped, the modest dwelling which sheltered those
nearest his heart, the heights overlooking river
and land which make up the military topography
he had so deeply studied, and the graves of that
silent army by which our city is still begirt. You can
hardly prolong your evening walk without coming
upon fields, once like any others, but now touched
with that mysterious meaning which speaks from
every spot where for home and kindred men have
fought and died.

ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 25

Thus, at the critical moment when a trifling ad-
vance of McClellan's forces would have begun a
siege of Richmond, Lee took command of the army
marshalled for its defence. His first step was to
overrule opinions tending to a retirement of our line.
His next was to fortify that line, and to summon to
his aid, for a great aggressive effort, all the forces
that could be spared in Virginia, Georgia, and the
Carolinas. In his comprehensive plan for the great
day of battle now at hand was embraced that small
but heroic band with which Jackson had just defeated
three armies, filled the Federal capital with alarm,
and diverted from McClellan McDowell's powerful
reinforcement.

The secrecy in which Lee knew how to wrap this
movement was itself a presage of generalship. He
not only concealed Jackson's rapid march, so that
Shields and McDowell should not follow on his heels,
but, by an actual movement by rail of Whiting's divi-
sion to Charlottesville, he made McClellan believe
that he was sending a strong detachment to the Val-
ley. Then, with an army still inferior to its adver-
sary by at least one-fourth, he burst upon McClel-
lan's right wing. By Lee's wise and bold combina-
tions, the weaker army showed, at the point of attack,
double the strength of the stronger. The Federal
general saw his communications snatched from his
control, his right wing, after an obstinate and bloody

i

26 ROBER T ED WARD LEE.

conflict, broken and put to flight, his whole army turn-
ing its back upon the goal of the campaign, and fight-
ing now, as men fight on issues of life and death —
not for Richmond — but for safety and a refuge-place
under the guns of the fleet.

I need not recall the vajor, the sacrifices, the
chequered fortunes, or the visible trophies of those
seven days of heroic struggle. Whatever criticism
may be passed upon the details of the several actions,
the broad fact remains that, as their direct result, that
moral ascendency, which is the real genius of victory,
forsook the Federal and passed over to the Confede-
rate camp. And Lee rose up, in the minds of friend
and foe, to the full stature of a great and daring leader.

An act of vigor quickly showed how correctly he
estimated the staggering effect of the mighty blow he
had dealt. He hurried Jackson to Gordonsville to
meet Pope's threatening force, and soon he dispatched
A. P. Hill's division on the same service. Jackson's
fierce attack on Banks at Cedar Mountain at once
caused new alarm for Washington. A rapid weak-
ening of McClellan's force was the result. Reading
this with that intuitive perception of what is passing
behind the enemy's lines, which henceforth marks him
as fit to command, Lee recognizes that the initiative
is now in his hands, and presently moves with nearly
his whole army to the line of the Rapidan. His design
is by celerity and vigor to counterbalance the enor-

ROBERT ED WARD LEE. 27

mous preponderance of his enemies. He means to
fall upon Pope before McClellan's army can join him.
You know the splendid boldness of Jackson's immor-
tal march to Pope's rear, which Lee approved and
ordered. You know how, after prodigies of rapid
movement, obstinate fighting, and intrepid guidance,
the Army of Northern Virginia stood once more
united on the plains of Manassas, and there baffled
and crushed an adversary its superior by one-half in
numbers. Again the Federal army turned its back
upon the goal of the campaign, again the Federal
army bent its march — not to its commander's, but to
Lee's imperious will. The invasion of Maryland, the
capture of Harper's Ferry attested it, and Lee's vic-
torious sweep was only checked by one of those un-
lucky accidents inseparable from war. His order for
the combined movements of his troops fell into
McClellan's hands when the ink upon it was scarcely
dry.

This precipitated the great battle of Sharpsburg.

On that sanguinary field 40,000 Confederates
finally repulsed every attack of an army of 87,000
Federal soldiers. On the day following the battle
they grimly stood in their long, thin lines, inviting the
assault which, as history will record, was not deliv-
ered.

. If ever commander was tried by overwhelming and
continuous peril, and rose superior to it, and tri-

28 ROBER T ED WARD LEE.

umphed by sheer moral power over force and for-
tune, Lee on those two fateful days gave that supreme
proof of a greatness of soul as much above depres-
sion under reverses as elation in success. In such
moments the army feel the lofty genius of their leader.
They acknowledge his royal right to command. They
recognize their proud privilege to follow and obey.
To such leaders only is it given to form heroic sol-
diers. Such were the ragged, half-starved men in
gray who stood with Lee at Sharpsburg.

It is a vision of some such moment, perhaps, that
our sculptor, Mercie, has caught with the eye of
genius, and fixed in imperishable bronze. The Gen-
eral has ridden up, it seems to me, in some pause of
battle, to the swelling crest of the front line, and,
while the eyes of his soldiers are fastened on him
in keen expectancy, but unwavering trust, the great
leader — silent and alone with his dread responsi-
bility — is scanning, with calm and penetrating glance,
the shifting phases and chances of the stricken field.
Such is the commanding figure which will presently
be unveiled to your view, and dull, indeed, must be
the imagination that does not henceforth people this
plain with invisible hosts, and compass Lee about —
now and forever — with the love and devotion of em-
battled ranks of heroic men in gray.

But the campaign of 1862 was yet to close in a
dramatic scene of unequalled grandeur.

ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 29

As in some colossal amphitheatre, Lee's soldiers
stood ranked on the bold hills encircling Fredericks-
burg to witness the deployment on the plain beneath,
with glittering bayonets and banners and every mar-
tial pomp, of Burnside's splendid army. A gorgeous
spectacle was spread out under their feet. It was
hard to realize that such a pageant was the prelude
to bloody battle! But the roar of a hundred great
guns from the Stafford heights quickly dispelled any
illusion, and the youngest recruit could see and
applaud the marvellous skill with which the Confede-
rate commander, so recently baffled in his plan of in-
vasion, was now interposing a proud and confident
army across the latest-discovered road to Richmond.
At the opportune moment, Lee's line of twenty-five
miles contracted to five, and 78,000 Confederates
calmly awaited the assault of 113,000 Federal sol-
diers. That assault was delivered. On rushed line
after line of undaunted Northern soldiers. Braver
men never marched more boldly to the cannon's
mouth. But their valor was unavailing. As Stone-
wall Jackson said, his men sometimes failed to carry a
position, but never to hold one. The rtiost deter-
mined courage and a carnage, appalling from its con-
centration, served only to mark the heroism of the
Northern soldier. But the prize of victory remained
with Lee. At one blow the Federal invasion was
paralyzed, and for months and months the great

i

30 ROBER T ED WARD LEE.

Northern host lay torpid in the mud and snow of a
Virginian winter.

The repose of that winter strengthened the Federal
army, but weakened Lee's, for he had been obliged
to detach Longstreet with two divisions to South-
eastern Virginia. Hence the last days of April, 1863,
found Lee confronting Hooker's army of 131,000
men with only 57,000 Confederates.

If I mention these respective numbers so often, it
is because they constitute the indestructible basis of
Lee's military fame. You will search in vain in his-
tory for a parallel to such uniform, excessive, and
prolonged disparity in numbers, such amazing in-
feriority in all the material and appliances of war,
crowned by such a succession of brilliant, though
dearly-bought victories. If these considerations in
themselves establish Lee's fame, they also vindicate
it from the only criticism to which it has been sub-
jected. They justify and explain the comparatively
indecisive character of those victories. When the
odds are four to five, three to five, three to seven,
when every man has fought, and there are no reserves,
the victories of the weaker army must of their very
nature fail to destroy an adversary of the same proud
race, of equal, if of different valor.

The events we now approach present Lee in every
phase of the consummate commander. Can you
imagine an attitude of grander firmness than that in

ROBERT ED WARD LEE. 31

which we see him on Hooker's crossing the Rappa-
hannock? There was a letter from him to the Con-
federate Secretary of War, written at that moment,
which showed him in this mood of heroic calm, wait-
ing for the development of the enemy's purpose,
determined to fight, but giving no hint of that tremen-
dous lion-spring at Chancellorsville, which was to
pluck out the very heart of the Federal invasion.

The plan of that great battle, as happens with
many master-works, was struck out at a single blow,
in a brief conference with Jackson, on the evening
of the ist of May.

An eye-witness has depicted the scene — the solemn
forest, the rude bivouac, the grave and courteous
commander, heir of all the knightly graces of the
cavaliers, the silent, stern lieutenant, with the faith
and the fire of Cromwell, the brief interchange of
question and answer, the swiftly following order for
the movement of the morrow.

The facts of the enemy's position and the surround-
ing topography had just been ascertained. The
genius of the commander, justly weighing the charac-
ter of his adversary, the nature of the country, and
the priceless gift in his own hands of such a thunder-
bolt of war. such a Titanic force as Jackson, instantly
devised that immortal flank march which will emblazon
Chancellorsville on the same roll of deathless fame
with Blenheim, with Leuthen, with Austerlitz, and
Jena.

i

32 ROBER T ED WARD LEE.

The battle of Chancellorsville will rank with the
model battles of history. It displayed Lee in every
character of military greatness. Nothing could ex-
ceed the sublime intrepidity with which, leaving Early
to dispute the heights of Fredericksburg against
Sedgwick's imposing force, he himself led five weak
divisions to confront Hooker's mighty host Lee
meant to fight, but not in the dark. He meant first
to look his adversary in the eye. He meant to see
himself how to aim his blow. Where shall we find
a match for the vigor, the swiftness, the audacity of
that flank march assigned to Jackson — for the fierce
and determined front attack led by Lee himself?
There is nothing equal to it save only Frederick's
immortal stroke of daring on the Austrian flank at
Leuthen. But the second day brings out the strong-
est and grandest lines of the Confederate com-
mander's heroic character. Jackson has been stricken
down, Lee's right arm has been torn from him; but,
the unconquerable firmness of his nature resisting
every suggestion of weakness, and that inborn love
of fight, without which no general can be great, blaz-
ing out and kindling all it touched, he forces on the
fierce attack along the whole line till, in a wild tumult
of battle, the Federal army wavers, gives ground,
melts away. The advance, if pushed, will drive the
enemy in confusion to the river. And Lee is pre-
paring for a combined assault. But a new element
now bursts into the action. News is brought from

ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 33

ten miles away that the Confederates have been
driven from the heights of Fredericksburg towards
Richmond, and Sedgwick is marching on Lee's rear.
Lee's celerity and firmness are equal to the crisis.
He promptly hurls four brigades from under his own
hand at the head of Sedgwick's column, and with
bold countenance hems in Hooker's army of nearly
thrice his own numbers. If it were not the sternest
tragedy, it might be comedy — this feat of thirty thou-
sand men shutting up eighty thousand. But Hooker
has been beaten, the decisive point is not there, as the
eye of genius can intuitively see. It is with Sedg-
wick six miles away, and, realizing in his practice the
golden maxim of the schools, Lee is quickly at that
point in sufficient, if not superior force. Sedgwick
is crushed on the third day, and driven across the
river. Lee now concentrates all his force to fall upon
Hooker with a final and overwhelming blow. The
fifth day breaks, and lo ! the Federal army has van-
ished, not a man of them save the dead, the wounded,
and the prisoners remaining on the Richmond side
of the Rappahannock.

What was left undone by Lee that genius, con-
stancy, and daring could effect ? Will any man say
that the Confederate army should have followed its
defeated, but colossal adversary across the river ?
This would have been to invite disaster.

The substantial and astounding fruits of victory

34 ROBERT EDWARD LEE.

..wjsre won in the collapse for that season of the Fed-

4 ;6£al invasion, in the masterly, initiative which Lee was
now; able; to seize, in. the; submissive; and; tett : tale

^ docility with which Hooker thencefbrth followed fe'very
mptipn;of the magic wand of the. Confederate cdm-
mander,. . ,. . . . ;

.• .The march to.the Potomac, and the captures by the

-way renewed the glories of 1862. For a few short
.\tfeeks Virginia was freed from the tramp of armies.

. But, a> before, the invasion, begun with an intoxicat-
ing outburst of martial hope, was doomed to end in
a drawn and doubtful battle. After a bloody struggle
on the heights of Gettysburg, the two armies stood
the greater part of two long summer days defiantly
looking into each other's eyes. Neither was willing
to attack its adversary. However deeply Lee may
have felt the failure of his daring stroke,, he took
upon himself all the reproach and all the responsi-
bility of the result. No word of criticism .or censure
passed his lips. But, confident of the devotion and

% the steadiness of his. army,! he promptly turned to the
duty of the hour. What an example of serenity, of
imperturbable firmness ! We owe to Gettysburg not
only the most thrillifog spectacle, of the unsurpassed

„ .valor of the Confederate soldier, but a matchless
exhibition of composure and magnanimity in the
Confederate commander. The aggressive campaign
failed, but neither the army nor its general was shaken.

ROBER T EDWARD LEE:< 85

We: find them during the remainder of 1863 'facing
their, old foe with undiminished spirit. And$£>on Lfce
gives proof of equal firmness, enterprise, and gener->
osity in detaching Longstreet's corps to strike a deci-
sive blow, eight hundred miles away, by the side of
Bragg at Chickamauga. The annals of war do not
exhibit a more unselfish act. • :

How shall I briefly describe the added titles to
enduring fame with which the campaign of the next
year, 1864, invested our great leader? Who that
lived through that time can forget the awful hush of
those calm spring days, which ushered in the tremen-
dous outburst of the Federal attack along a thousand
miles of front ?

In every quarter, at one and the same moment, the
Confederacy felt the furious impact of a whole na-
tion's force driven on by the resistless will of a single
commander. Grant's aggressiveness, Grant's stub-
bornness, Grant's unyielding resolve to destroy the
Confederate armies, seemed suddenly to animate
every corps, every division, almost every man of the
Federal host. Even now we stand aghast at the
awful disparity in the numbers and resources of the
two armies. Swinton puts the force under Grant's
immediate eye on the first day of the campaign at
140,000 men. Grant himself puts it at 1 16,000. It
is certain that Lee had less than 64,000 soldiers: of: all
arms. But, in addition, Grant was directing against

36 ROBER T ED WARD LEE.

Richmond or its communications 30,000 men under
Butler, 17,000 under Sigel and Crook, and a numer-
ous and powerful fleet.

Let me give two examples of the extraordinary
means at his disposal. He never went into camp but
that, within an hour or two, every division was placed
in telegraphic communication with his headquarters.
Lee could only reach the several parts of his army by
the aid of mounted couriers. But this is the most
striking. On four several occasions Grant shifted his
base by a simple mandate to Washington to lodge
supplies at Fredericksburg, at Port Royal, at the
White House, at City Point. Thus, his communica-
tions were absolutely invulnerable. With the bound-
less wealth at his control, he laid under contribution
the resources of the commerce and manufactures of
the world, and, combining all the agencies of destruc-
tion in the vast host under his command, fired now
with something of his own smothered, but relentless
passion, he hurled it in repeated and bloody assaults
at the heart of the Confederacy.

The heart of the Confederacy was the Army of
Northern Virginia.

Surely, heroic courage never faced a more tremen-
dous crisis than Lee now met and mastered. Grant
had crossed the Rapidan. No idea of retreat entered
Lee's mind. He only waited to discover the purpose
of the enemy. Then, with fierce energy, he hurled

ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 87

two corps at the heads of his columns, not even halt-
ing for Longstreet to come up.

For two days that awful struggle raged in the dark
and gruesome thickets of the Wilderness. Lee could
not drive back his stubborn adversary, but he stag-
gered and stunned and foiled him. Any previous
commander of the Army of the Potomac would have
retreated. Grant sullenly steals off by night to Spot-
sylvania.

But a lion is there in his path. The road to Rich-
mond is blocked. by Lee. Grant's determination to
force a passage brings on one of the fiercest and
most protracted struggles of the war. For four days
out of twelve that raging fire-flood surges about the
lines of Spotsylvania. The very forest is Consumed
by it. How can man withstand its fury? Only by
that courage which in its contempt of death is a pre-
sage of immortality. On such a field the human
spirit rises even in common men to transcendent
heights of valor and self-sacrifice, the great soul of
the commander moves through the wild chaos like
some elemental force, and the terrible majesty of war
veils its horrors.

Grant cannot take those lines. The solitary advan-
tage won at the salient by his overwhelming masses
does but display on an immortal page the quick re-
source, the commanding authority, the unconquerable
tenacity of the Confederate General. Grant could

38 ROBER T ED WARD L&&

not drive him from those lines ; but the commander
of a greatly superior army can never find if hard to
turn his adversary's position, especially if/by mfeans
of a fleet and convenient rivers, he can shift his b&se
as easily as write a dispatch. Yet Lee always diVirificf
every turnirig movement, and always placed his army,
in' time across the path of its adversary. ^

* In the succession of bloody battles ending with the?
slaughter of Cold Harbor, he everywhere won the
substantial fruits as well as the honors of victory, and
between the Wilderness and the Chickahominy, in
twenty-eight days he inflicted on Grant a loss 6f
60,000 men — an appalling number, equal to the
strength of Lee's own army s/t the beginning of the
campaign.

Try to conceive the intense strain of those twenty-
eight days. Jackson is no longer by Lee's side,
Longstreet has been stricken down severely wounded
on the first day. Suppose a single moment of hesi-
t&tion in the commander, a single false interpretation

•

of obscure and conflicting appearances, a failure at
any hour of the day or night to maintain in their per J
feet balance all those high faculties which we see
united in Lee, and what would have availed the valor
of those matchless Confederate soldiers? Can we
wonder that they loved him, can we wonder that, like
Scipio's veterans, they were ready to die for him, if
he would only spare himself? Thrice in this cam-

ROBER T ED WARD LM& 39

paign did they give him this supreme proof of per-
sonal devotion.

;Of the siege of Petersburg I have only time to say
that in it for nine months the Confederate commander
displayed every art by which genius and courage can
ftiftke good the lack of numbers and resources. . But
the increasing misfortunes of the Confederate arms
on other* theatres pf w^r gradually cut off the supply
of men and means. , The Army of. Northern Virginia
ceased to be recruited. It ceased to be adequately
fed. It lived for months on less than one-third
rations. It was demoralized, not by the enemy in its
front, butrby the enemy in Georgia and the Carolinas.
It dwindled to 35,000 men holding a front of thirty-
five miles ; but over the enemy it still cast the shadow
of its great name. Again and. again, by a bold offen-
sive, it arrested the Federal movement to fasten on
its communications. At last, an irresistible concen-
tration of forces broke through its long, thin line of
battle. Petersburg had to be abandoned. Richmond
was evacuated. Trains bearing supplies were inter-
cepted, and a starving army, harassed for seven days
by incessant attacks on rear and flank, found itself
completely hemmed in by overwhelming masses.
Nothing remained to it but its stainless honor, its
unbroken courage.

In those last solemn scenes, when strong men,
losing all self-control, broke down and sobbed like

40 ROBER T ED WARD LEE.

children, Lee stood forth as great as in the days of
victory and triumph. No disaster crushed his spirit^
no extremity of danger ruffled his bearing. In the
agony of dissolution now invading that proud army,
which for four years had wrested victory from every
peril, in that blackness of utter darkness, he preserved
the serene lucidity of his mind. He looked the stub-
born facts calmly in the face, and, when no military
resource remained, when he recognized the impossi-
bility of making another march or fighting another
battle, he bowed his head in submission to that Power,
which makes and unmakes nations.

The surrender of the fragments of the Army of
Northern Virginia closed the imperishable record of
his military life.

What a catastrophe! What a moving and pathetic
contrast! On the one side, complete and dazzling
triumph after a long succession of humiliating disas-
ters ; on the other, absolute ruin and defeat — a crown
of thorns for that peerless army which hitherto had
known only the victor's laurel! But the magnanimity
of the conqueror, not less than the fortitude of the
vanquished shone out over the solemn scene, and
softened its tragic outlines of fate and doom. The
moderation and good sense of the Northern people,
breathing the large and generous air of our western
world, quickly responded to Grant's example, and,
though the North was afterwards betrayed into fanati-

ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 41

cal and baleful excess on more than one great sub-
ject, all the fiercer passions of a bloody civil war were
rapidly extinguished. There was to be no Poland, no
Ireland in America. When the Hollywood pyramid
was rising over the Confederate dead soon after the
close of the contest, some one suggested for the in-
scription a classic verse, which may be rendered :

"They died for their country — their country perished with them."

Thus would have spoken the voice of despair.

Far different were the thoughts of Lee. He had
drawn his sword in obedience only to the dictates of
duty and honor, and, looking back in that moment of
utter defeat, he might have exclaimed with Demos-
thenes : lt I say that, if the event had been manifest
to the whole world beforehand, not even then ought
Athens to have forsaken this course, if Athens had
any regard for her glory, or for her past, or for the
ages to come." But, facing the duty of the hour, Lee
saw now that the question submitted to the arbitra-
ment of war had been finally answered. He recog-
nized that the unity of the American people had been
irrevocably established. He felt that it would be
impiety and crime to dishonor by the petty strife of
faction that pure and unselfish struggle for constitu-
tional rights, which, while a single hope remained,
had been loyally fought out by great armies, led by

42 ROBER T ED WARD LEE.

heroic captains, and sustained by the patriotic sacri-
fices of a noble and resolute people. He, therefore,
promptly counselled his old soldiers to look upon the
great country thus reunited by blood and iron as their
own, and to live and labor for its honor and welfare.
His own conduct was in accord with these teachings.
Day by day his example illustrated what his manly
words declared : "that human virtue should be equal
to human calamity/ '

For five years he was now permitted to exhibit to
his countrymen, in the discharge of the duties of presi-
dent of Washington College, the best qualities of citi-
zen, sage, and patriot. In Plato's account of the edu-
cation of a Persian king, four tutors are chosen from
among the Persian nobles — one the wisest, another
the most just, a third the most temperate, and a fourth
the bravest. It was the unique fortune of the stu-
dents of Washington College to find these four great
characters united in one man— ^their peerless Lee,
As the people saw him fulfilling these modest, but
noble functions ; as they saw him with antique sim-
plicity putting aside every temptation to use his great
fame for vulgar gain ; as they saw him, in self-respect-
ing contentment with the frugal earnings of his per-
sonal labor, refusing every offer of pecuniary assist-
ance; as they realized his unselfish devotion of all
that remained of strength and life to the nurture of

ROBER T JSD WARD LEE. 43

the Southern youth in knowledge and morals, a new
conviction of his wisdom and virtue gathered force
and volume, and spread abroad into all lands.

The failure of the righteous cause for which he
fought denied him that eminence of civil station, in
which his great qualities in their happy mixture might
well have afforded a parallel to the strength and the
moderation of Washington. But what failure could
obscure that moral perfection which places him as
easily by the side of the best men that have ever
lived, as his heroic actions make him the peer of the
greatest? There are men whose influence on man-
kind neither worldly success nor worldly failure can
affect.

11 The greatest gift the hero leaves his race
Is to have been a hero."

This moral perfection, breathing the very spirit of
his Christian faith, is no illusive legend of a succeed-
ing generation exaggerating the worth of the past.
Our belief in it rests upon the unanimous testimony
of the men who lived and acted with him, among
whom nothing is more common than the declaration,
that Lee was the purest and best man of action whose
career history has recorded. In his whole life, laid
bare to the gaze of the world, the least friendly criti-
cism has never discovered one single deviation from
the narrow path of rectitude and honor.

What was strained eulogy when Montesquieu said

44 ROBER T ED WARD LEE.

of another great soldier — Turenne — that '* his life was
a hymn in praise of humanity" — is, if applied to
Lee, the language of sober truth. No man can con-
sider his life without a feeling of renewed hope and
trust in mankind. There is about his exhibitions of
moral excellence the same quality of power in reserve
that marks him as a soldier. He never failed to come
up to the full requirements of any situation, and his
conduct communicated the impression that nothing
could arise to which he would be found unequal. His
every action went straight to the mark without affec-
tation or display. It cost him no visible effort to be
good or great. He was not conscious that he was
exceptional in either way, and he died in the belief
that, as he had been sometimes unjustly blamed, so
he had as often been too highly praised.

Such is the holy simplicity of the noblest minds.
Such was the pure and lofty man, in whom we see the
perfect union of Christian virtue and old Roman
manhood. His goodness makes us love his great-
ness, and the fascination, which this matchless combi-
nation exerts, is itself a symptom and a source in us
of moral health. As long as our people truly love
and venerate him, there will remain in them a princi-
ple of good. For all the stupendous wealth and
power, which in the last thirty years have lifted these
States to foremost rank among the nations of the
earth, are less a subject for pride than this one heroic

ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 45

man — this human product of our country and its in-
stitutions.

Let this monument, then, teach to generations yet
unborn these lessons of his life \ Let it stand, not as
a record of civil strife, but as a perpetual protest
against whatever is low and sordid in our public and
private objects ! Let it stand as a memorial of per-
sonal honor that never brooked a stain, of knightly
valor without thought of self, of far-reaching military
genius unsoiled by ambition, of heroic constancy from
which no cloud of misfortune could ever hide the path
of duty ! Let it stand for reproof and censure, if our
people shall ever sink below the standards of their
fathers ! Let it stand for patriotic hope and cheer,
if a day of national gloom and disaster shall ever
dawn upon our country ! Let it stand as the embodi-
ment of a brave and virtuous people's ideal leader !
Let it stand as a great public act of thanksgiving and
praise, for that it pleased Almighty God to bestow
upon these Southern States a man so formed to re-
flect His attributes of power, majesty, and goodness !

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